4 ms·

> certainty calls into question the street wisdom that pot isn’t (physically) addicting. This isn't "street wisdom"; there's a massive body of clinical researc

> certainty calls into question the street wisdom that pot isn’t (physically) addicting. This isn't "street wisdom"; there's a massive body of clinical research that's gone into marijuana and investigating its effects on the body and brain. Marijuana is one of the most-studied drugs in existence, far more so than most prescription medication on the market.

hsienmaneja 8y ago
Actually, the notion that pot isn’t addictive is the street wisdom, or was when I was growing up. This is in contradiction to the reality.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Actually, the notion that pot isn’t addictive is the street wisdom, or was when I was growing up. This is in contradiction to the reality. No, it's not in contradiction to reality; it's the results of clinical research. To the extent that "addiction" is a relevant term in colloquial use (it's neither a DSM-IV diagnostic criterion nor a formal pharmacological term), marijuana is not known to induce practically significant symptoms of physical dependence.
  - hsienmaneja 8y ago
    Copy that. Getting into semantics, from the descriptions here, one could describe the withdrawal symptoms to be physically/practically significant for some cowards.
JeremyBanks 8y ago
Such research is probably improperly generalized or otherwise misinterpreted. I’ve known lots of people who smoked too much weed, and “withdrawal” symptoms were pretty consistent among people who really smoked to excess (multiple grams per day). Judging from this and similar threads, many people will attest to the same. It’s not plausible to me that this is an illusion.
- iamnothere 8y ago
  > Such research is probably improperly generalized or otherwise misinterpreted. A great deal of it is, and some of it has more fundamental problems. I forget his name -- this was quite a while ago -- but there was one scientist in particular who had published a wealth of anti-cannabis studies, most of which were obviously flawed or biased in some way. Furthermore, at the time he was one of the only people allowed to do the research, since access to "official" MJ was heavily restricted, and the supply he used was a small batch of plants grown specifically for research, hardly representative of real-world crops. Most of his work was federally funded, and this was during the Bush II era, so you can imagine the pressure to back up the government's anti-MJ stance. Wish I could remember more details, this was a while ago! When I first learned about this, it was really an eye-opener on how the funding -> research -> policy treadmill works when it is successfully subverted by powerful interests. Fortunately it's hard to keep the process going forever. Science works in the long run, but sometimes it moves too slowly for people facing real injustice.

hsienmaneja 8y ago

Actually, the notion that pot isn’t addictive is the street wisdom, or was when I was growing up. This is in contradiction to the reality.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> Actually, the notion that pot isn’t addictive is the street wisdom, or was when I was growing up. This is in contradiction to the reality. No, it's not in contradiction to reality; it's the results of clinical research. To the extent that "addiction" is a relevant term in colloquial use (it's neither a DSM-IV diagnostic criterion nor a formal pharmacological term), marijuana is not known to induce practically significant symptoms of physical dependence.
- hsienmaneja 8y ago
  Copy that. Getting into semantics, from the descriptions here, one could describe the withdrawal symptoms to be physically/practically significant for some cowards.

JeremyBanks 8y ago

Such research is probably improperly generalized or otherwise misinterpreted. I’ve known lots of people who smoked too much weed, and “withdrawal” symptoms were pretty consistent among people who really smoked to excess (multiple grams per day). Judging from this and similar threads, many people will attest to the same. It’s not plausible to me that this is an illusion.

iamnothere 8y ago
> Such research is probably improperly generalized or otherwise misinterpreted. A great deal of it is, and some of it has more fundamental problems. I forget his name -- this was quite a while ago -- but there was one scientist in particular who had published a wealth of anti-cannabis studies, most of which were obviously flawed or biased in some way. Furthermore, at the time he was one of the only people allowed to do the research, since access to "official" MJ was heavily restricted, and the supply he used was a small batch of plants grown specifically for research, hardly representative of real-world crops. Most of his work was federally funded, and this was during the Bush II era, so you can imagine the pressure to back up the government's anti-MJ stance. Wish I could remember more details, this was a while ago! When I first learned about this, it was really an eye-opener on how the funding -> research -> policy treadmill works when it is successfully subverted by powerful interests. Fortunately it's hard to keep the process going forever. Science works in the long run, but sometimes it moves too slowly for people facing real injustice.